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Leading democrats in congress have generously requested that Bush's Supreme Court appointee meet only two simple requirements. As stated in the Constitution:

1. He must not allow idealogy to interfere with his decisions, and

2. He must be head-over-heels, red-hot, crazy-in-love with abortion.

So far, Judge Roberts hasn't been very forthcoming concerning his opinions about a Woman's Right to Choose. His reluctance to burst into giddy squeals of joy at the mere mention of "abortion" is cause enough for alarm. Nonetheless, gracious democrats were willing to accept him as a "moderate" until evidence could be manufactured to the contrary, and then repeated in a hysterical furvor until it drowns out all else. However, there have been quiet rumblings from the general vicinity of Ted Kennedy's stately blowhole that suggest Roberts is an extremist in moderate's clothing, a religious zealot who seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and condemn millions of innocent abortionists to death by starvation. While Roberts continues to stonewall, several notes scrawled on the back of a Boston-area buffet menu suggest that Roberts is less than enthusiastic about the concept of tearing a fetus apart inside its mother's womb and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Suddenly, Bush's pick doesn't seem quite the "moderate", does he?

The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice should not be taken lightly. A Woman's Right to Choose is the magic hat from which all other rights are conjured - from a Right to Same-Sex Marriage to a Right to a Living Wage. As a jury member in an active court case, I have a deep respect for the sanctity of our judicial system, and refuse to entrust to a side show freak who becomes squeamish over the thought of a baby's brains being sucked out through its skull so mommy won't have to miss a party.

Hillary was right: abortion is a sad, even tragic choice to many, many womyn. But as any abortionist will tell you, planned pregnancies don't put food on the table. You can't fuel up your Ferarri with living babies, baby! That's why I was proud to spend my Thursday night at Seattle's first annual Screw Abstinence Party and Charity Abort-o-thon. Hosted by NARAL, a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping abortionists out of the poor house, "Screw Abstinence" promised to be fun for the whole family - and it did not disappoint. More than a thinly veiled singles event for people who would otherwise never get laid, Screw Abstinence was a plethora of informative displays, talented performers, and exciting thrill rides - and all for a good cause.

While the Giant Scaling Wall of Dildos and other areas of the event were geared strictly towards adults, I had the privilege of operating the amazing "It's a Lousy World" ride for the kiddies. Both fun and educational, It's a Lousy World was a leisurely gondola ride through a stylized Reproductive Health Clinic, while a menagerie of animatronic fetuses sang a joyful song in 16 different languages about how splendid it was to be aborted, rather than shuffled from foster home to foster home all their miserable lives.

Screw Abstinence also entertained the kids with a wide array of colorful, costume characters. Making a special appearance at this year's event was Back Alley Betty, a gaunt, gnarled old crone and a dead ringer for Ann Coulter. With a Bible in one hand a rusty coat hanger in the other, Betty wandered the crowd, screeching scripture at unsuspecting tots. Along with Partial Birth Abortion Pete, Betty has drawn some criticism for being too graphic for small children. But she paints an accurate picture of the bleak future these kids will face should they fail to exercise their Right to Choose.

For the teens, there was the "Kids are Going to Do it Anyway" booth, where young boys and girls were encouraged to explore their sexuality in a clean, safe environment away from the prying eyes of their fuddy-duddy parents. Unlike what Bush and Co. preach in their abstinence-only sex-ed programs, our young people must learn that human sexuality is a beautiful thing and even more beautiful the more people you do it with. Do we demand that monkeys remain monogamous? Do we ask dogs humping in the front yard to hold off until marriage? Of course not. So why do we ask it of our own kids?

Because Christian Fundamentalists have spent the past two thousand years turning casual sex with complete strangers into something dirty, that's why.

Archealogical evidence suggests that cro-magnon man, although primitive, had a highly progressive concept of human sexuality. A typical cro-magnon male would copulate with 100 to 200 partners in his lifetime, and had no weird psychological hang-ups concerning buggery. It's a shame that Christians have regressed our culture to a state that predates even prehistoric man.

Indeed, with all their right-wing mumbo jumbo about abstinence and monogamy, it's a wonder that conservatives haven't forced more abortionists out of work. Hopefully, with the help of NARAL and other organizations like it, we'll see to it that they never do.

But after reading further, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Thankfully, the court ruling only applies to youths who have committed horrible, ghastly crimes - usually through no fault of their own. Womyn can still purge their bodies of intestinal parasites without the Ashcroft Gestapo hauling them off to Gitmo.

For now, anyway.

As with the Terry Schiavo case, this may just be another Bush plot to slowly chip away at a Woman's Right to Choose. Now that his conservative-packed Supreme Court has ruled that executing teenagers is "cruel and usual punishment", it'll be all to easy for them to slowly lower the bar. Today, it's teenagers. Tomorrow they'll be insisting it's "cruel and unusual" to slowly drown your five kids in a bathtub - rather than merely a symptom of post-partum depression. Then before you know it, we'll be right back in the dark ages of the 1950's when abortion wasn't lauded as a noble feminist statement against male hegemony.

Still, I'm not quite ready to jump on the pro-death penalty bandwagon. At least, not for so-called "criminals". If Bush is going to undermine a Woman's Right to Choose by sparing the lives of "guilty" minors, then we must do the exact opposite to protect that right and demand the immediate execution of all "innocent" teens.

It shouldn't he too difficult. We'll begin with every minor who doesn't have a criminal record. Their "innocence" is merely a product of their complacency, so they're little more than itty-bitty Eichmanns in the prison/industrial complex. As soon as they're out of the way, we can start on the College Republicans, who've been itching for it for a long time. Oh, and we absolutely must do something about the Boy Scouts...except for the gay ones.

Now, I'm not advocating acts of violence against any of these people, but rather a kind, humane, form of euthanasia. Death is, after all, a release from the cruel suffering of life. It should be a beautiful experience, spent amongst loved ones, and administered by physicians with the government-granted authority to snuff us out.

Notice a pattern here? Even fascist Faux News and the Moonie Times agree that the bizarre creature brutally extracted from a murdered woman last week was a fetus. Not a human child, mind you, but a F-E-T-U-S. Yet despite a media consensus to the contrary, the anti-choice crowd still insists on referring to the damned thing as a "baby". A poor womyn is killed and a fetus is on the loose, yet all these repugs can think about is how to use this tragedy as a means to undermine Roe v. Wade.

Goddess forbid I should ever have a tapeworm. The fundies would probably insist it had a "right-to-life" and force me to carry it around inside me for the rest of my days.

Yes, I know the fetus has cute little "baby hands" with cute little "baby fingers" and makes cute little "baby noises", but that doesn't make it any more human than a baby-shaped intestinal parasite. Furthermore, I don't recall this fetus being "born", nor have I read anything remotely hinting that the host organism wanted it to be. She could have been on her way to the abortion clinic for all we know. So lacking a physical birth or any sort of written documentation certifying an intent to carry the pregnancy to term, we must protect a Woman's Right to Choose and err on the side of inhumanity. It's a FETUS, and will remain one until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says otherwise.

Unfortunately, that could take years. The fetus could be well into high school before it is deemed "alive" and awarded full human rights. Not quite living, yet not quite dead, this veritible Schrodinger's Fetus would be subject to relentless harassment and teasing all through it's quasi-childhood.

I know, because I've been there. There was a little girl on my street who was "born" prematurely, her "mother" having died in a car accident on the way to the abortion clinic. "Frannie the Fetus", we'd call her. We'd chase her all the way to the bus stop in the morning, singing "Frannie the Fetus! Frannie the Fetus! Watch out she's gonna eat us!" until she broke down in tears. Then her old man called the gestapo on me and I spent my 28th birthday picking up trash off the side of the freeway. So I'm no stranger to suffering.

Sadly, no one understood the potential danger of a fetus allowed to roam free back then, and they sure as hell don't understand it now. I hear that the "father" has already claimed custody of the fetus and is going to selfishly raise it as if it were his "child", oblivious to the damage he's doing to the cause of reproductive freedom. As with the Laci Peterson case, the anti-choicers will use the fetus' humanlike characteristics to insinuate life where there is none, and chip away at a Woman's Right to Choose.

Cheers filled the San Diego courthouse yesterday as the jury announced their astounding verdict: Scott Peterson will spend the rest of his life on Death Row. But is Peterson really guilty of murder, or is he merely the victim of a right-wing plot to undermine Roe v. Wade and ruin everyone's good time?

Make no mistake: Peterson was a jerk. However, condemning him for the murder of what Christian extremists call an "unborn child" will only give the anti-choice zealots the ammunition they need to completely abolish a woman's constitutional Right to Choose. By making it a double-felony to murder a pregnant woman, Bush's preposterous Unborn Victims of Violence Act was the opening salvo in his immoral war against women's reproductive rights. Now with the Peterson verdict, we find ourselves on a dangerously slippery slope to a Handmaid's Tale world of forced breeding and big, silly hats.

Sadly, Scott Peterson's isn't the only blood Bush has on his hands. The Shrub is solely responsible for the mysterious death of Peterson's wife, Laci, as well. From the moment she discovered that she was stricken with pregnancy, Laci Peterson began behaving as if the lifeless lump of goo inside her were actually alive. She named the goo. She bought clothes for the goo. She had a goo shower. Totally oblivious to the feminist's 40 year struggle against male hegemony, she strutted around town like some sort of expectant mother. In reality, she was a brainwashed automaton, programmed since birth to look forward to marriage, pregnancy and motherhood. Programmed, ironically, by the very same "family values" ilk who think sex is "dirty" and preach abstinence to their children!

Laci Peterson's death was tragic, but let's be realistic. We can all feign shock and horror over the thought of a mangled fetus being picked at by crabs on the beach, but it doesn't change the fact that if abortion were safe, legal, and mandatory, Laci Petersen would be alive today.

A wonderful revelation came to me on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade: Abortion is Patriotism!

Consider this: Freedom of Speech is a Constitutional right. As we've learned from the Dixie Chicks, it's patriotic to exercise your right to free speech.

Therefore, since Abortion is a Constitutional right, it must also be patriotic to exercise that right! Show your support for the red, white & blue and get your abortions TODAY, ladies! God bless America!

Oh boy, this is really going to drive the right-wing jingos CRAZY!!! No wonder that great American patriot, Gen. Wesley Clark, is so gung-ho for abortions right up until the hamster pokes it's head out - it's as patriotic as the Fourth of July!

And it works every other right as well. Freedom of the Press. Freedom of Expression. The Right to Privacy. The only rights it doesn't apply to are Freedom of Religion and the Right to Bear Arms, but those aren't real rights anyway.

Looks like it's back to the coat hangers for our daughters - the right-wing religious zealots have passed a partial birth abortion ban. Now watch as the bodies pile up from botched back-alley abortions, all thanks to Bush and his big oil baron bible thumpers who want to control our bodies. Since Dumbya declared an end to military operations aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, the religious nuts have waged a war on the Bill of Rights. From our 1st amendment Protection against Religion, to our 4th amendment Right to Terminate an Unwanted Pregnancy, Hitler Ashcroft and his goose-stepping, cat-hating cronies have been shredding the Constitution like so much um...shredded paper...and stuff. The right-wing spin machine, with its scare mongering depictions of babies getting their brains sucked out while still alive, has turned a beautiful moment in a young woman's liberation from white male hegemony into a brutal, monstrous act. With their deluded crusade to protect an imaginary "right-to-life", the right-to-lifers have trampled over the right-to-choose, and the right-to-die, and the right-to-choose-to-die. Shame! SHAAAAAAME! I'd sell my 17 degrees in gender studies to see the Bush twins get pregnant, then forced to carry the squirming fetuses inside them to term as punishment for their father's fascist fiddling with reproductive rights.

My sister has lost her mind. Somehow, she let herself become convinced by her right-wing fascist husband that a woman's job is to marry and reproduce, and now she's hopelessly pregnant. But what annoys me far more than the fact that she's thrown away her career and spat in the face of women's lib by refusing to have an abortion, is her insistance on referring to the lifeless lump of good in her belly as "The Baby".

"The Baby is due in February!" she chirps.
"I can feel The Baby kick!" she giggles.
"We're naming The Baby after Jim's father!" she sings.

Women's rights activists have fought valiantly for years to dehumanize the unborn, and here's ol' sis, merrily throwing it all right back to the stone ages. I try to tell her, "Sis, it's not a Baby...it's a FETUS. It more closely resembles a shaved HAMSTER than a human being, and you're only fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Abort it immediately, before it can crawl out and vote Republican."

But she won't listen. In fact, she laughs at me.

"Okay, bro...how many people should I invite to the FETUS shower? That reminds me...I need to get to the Fetus Store and by some Fetus clothing for the Fetus! Hahahahahaa!"

When will George Bush and his right-wing bible-thumping cronies cease their relentless brainwashing of our youth?